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The foundation begins with the Declaration’s premise that all men are created equal. This obviously does not mean that they enjoy equal endowments but rather that the starting point for political analysis is that no person is fundamentally entitled to rule another. Normal, mature adults are ultimately responsible for their own survival and flourishing: our actions typically depend on our own choices, which is why we are rightly praised or blamed for our voluntary decisions. Although others may at times assist us in achieving our goals, they can neither fully assume responsibility for our choices,...

Note:Good discussion about what it means that all men are created equal.

Lincoln understood that while the power to make rules is important, it is not the most basic principle of our constitutional system. The wolf is wrong to imagine that he has a fundamental right to rule others, or that the sheep’s rights are simply whatever the wolf decides to allow. America’s constitutional order is premised on the opposite principle: on the basic right of each person to be free. People are born with liberty; their rights are not privileges that government gives to them as it pleases. Legitimate government is based on, and bound by, their rights, and nobody—no king, no legislature,...

Note:Starting to read "The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence" by Timothy Sandefur

The Wall Street Journal (The Wall Street Journal) - Clipping Loc. 1299-1340 | Added on Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 08:47 AM REVIEW & OUTLOOK The Sequester Revelation Obama has the legal power to avoid spending-cut damage. 885 words Associated Press A nd when the Republicans opened the seventh seal of the sequester, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black and the stars fell unto the Earth; and our nation's ability to forecast severe weather, such as drought events, hurricanes and tornados, was seriously undermined. Lo, and the children were not vaccinated, and all the beasts starved...

Note:Hope this article posts OK. It should provide you info on sequester choices

The Stealth Tax Hike 642 words Anyone still need a reason to abandon "grand bargains" and deals negotiated between this President and GOP Congressional leaders? Here it is: The revival of two dormant provisions of the tax code means the much ballyhooed $450,000 income threshold for the highest tax rate is largely fake. The two provisions are the infamous PEP and Pease, which aficionados of stealth tax increases will recognize immediately as relics of the 1990 tax increase. Those measures, which limit deductions and exemptions for higher-income taxpayers, expired in 2010. The Obama tax bill revived...

Britain’s Missing Millionaires 309 words A funny thing often happens on the way to soaking the rich: They don’t stick around for the bath. Take Britain, where Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs service reports that the number of tax payers declaring £1 million a year in income fell by more than 60% in fiscal 2010-2011 from the year before. That was the year that millionaires became liable for the 50% income tax rate that Gordon Brown’s government introduced in its final days in 2010, up from the previous 40% rate. Lo, the total number of millionaire tax filers plunged to 6,000 in 2010-2011,...

Note:Raising tax rates don't work, just reduce the wealth pool.

David shared from
Politics: Obama's Cliff Offer Spurned in
the PAGE ONE section of
The Wall Street Journal
by Janet Hook, Damian Paletta, Carol E. Lee

One of the most eye-opening elements of the White House plan was a proposal that Congress give up its power to raise the U.S.'s formal borrowing limit, which has become a running source of political conflict. A clash over raising the limit in 2011 led to a downgrade of the U.S.'s once-pristine credit rating.

This brings us to Al Gore. Earlier this month the Washington Post's Carol Leonnig reported that the former vice president's wealth is today estimated at $100 million, up from less than $2 million when he left government service on a salary of $181,400. How did he make this kind of money? It wasn't his share of the Nobel Peace Prize. Nor was it the book and movie proceeds from "An Inconvenient Truth." Instead, as Ms. Leonnig reports, "Fourteen green-tech firms in which Gore invested received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks, part of President Obama's...

Benghazi Malarkey When on defense, blame budget cuts that never happened. 162 words Joe Biden in the Benghazi section of his debate with Paul Ryan said, "The Congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for." As Mr. Biden might say, incredible. Democrats take the Ryan budget's across-the-board reductions in nondefense discretionary spending and extrapolate them to State. But the Ryan budget never got into embassy security, nor did it become law. For three years, House Republicans increased spending on the "Worldwide Security Protection" account in State's...

More than any single failure, the larger lesson here is the eternal one about the folly of government industrial policy. Someday someone will find a way to store electric power for long periods, and someday someone may build a commercially viable electric car. We will be the first to cheer. But the second to last people in the world to know when that day arrives will work for the Department of Energy, and the last will be U.S. Senators. In 2008 President Obama sold voters a fairy tale about millions of "green jobs" that he could conjure up merely by "investing" taxpayer money. The 2012 election...

Note:From a WSJ article about failure of A123 a battery company that received DOE funding like SOLYNDRA

President Obama has lost much of his poll advantage on foreign policy, and in this case Mitt Romney's debating skills have nothing to do with it. The real world is doing the job, notably with the attacks in Benghazi but also in Russia, where Mr. Obama once vowed to "reset" relations for the better. Last week, the Russian government unilaterally pulled out of a two-decade old partnership with the U.S. to safeguard nuclear and chemical weapons. The so-called Nunn-Lugar program, named after its Senate authors, was a genuine post-Cold War success. It nudged Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to give...